By way of background concerning some conventional systems, computing devices have traditionally executed applications and data services locally to the device. In such case, as data is accessed, processed, stored, cached, etc., the data may travel on the device over local buses, interfaces and other data pathways, however, the user of the device has not had to worry about interference or exposure of user data unless the device itself is lost or stolen.
Yet, with the evolution of on-line and cloud services, applications and services are increasingly being moved to network providers who perform some or all of a given service on behalf of devices. In such case, the user of the device(s) may become concerned with who can access, or potentially worse, interfere with, the user's data while it is uploaded to a service, while it is stored or processed by the service or while it retrieved from the service. In short, when the data of a user's device leaves the domain of physical possession and enters a network environment away from the user, a concern over sloppy or malicious handling of or interference with the data by third parties naturally arises. Accordingly, it is desirable to increase the trust, security and privacy for cloud services and the handling of data in connection with cloud services, or even within an enterprise where the data leaves one region of control and enters another.
For instance, today, users can attach an external drive to a primary device, such as a local personal computer (PC) or other device, and create a synthetic full backup of data of the primary device. As the name suggests, a synthetic full backup is a synthesized backup created based on most recent full backup data, e.g., standard or synthetic, and any implicated subsequent incremental or differential backups.
Conventionally, this physical possession of a reconstructable copy of data on an external drive has guarded against the loss of important data stored on the primary device. For instance, by attaching the external drive or disk, such as a Flash memory drive or other external hard drive, via USB cable or the like, a user of the device could be comforted that the data can be reconstructed in the event of loss of the primary device. This way, if the primary device suffers some sort of catastrophic condition that prevents access to its data, or results in irrevocable distortion or destruction of the data, the data can be recovered from the external drive or disk in possession of the user. However, of course, if the primary device and the external drive are both damaged in the same catastrophe (e.g., earthquake), then the problem is back to square one.
The evolution of network storage farms capable of storing terabytes of data (with potential for petabytes, exabytes, etc. of data in the future) has created an opportunity to mimic the local scenario in a cloud, with separation of the primary device and the external storage. Cloud storage of backup data also allows many devices to store their backup data without the need for separate storage for each device. In this regard, instead of storing the backup data by attaching a secondary storage device to the primary device via cable, with cloud storage, the backup data is transmitted to and stored by a cloud service provider, which manages the storage of the backup data on behalf of the device.
However, as alluded to above, the problem remains that no cloud service or network storage provider has been able to effectively alleviate the problems of and demands for security, privacy and integrity of the backup data while stored in the cloud. In short, users require elevated trust that their data remains secure and private when physical control over the storage vehicle is surrendered, and this hurdle has significantly prevented enterprises and consumers from adopting the backup of important data via third party network services and solutions.
The above-described deficiencies of today's devices and data backup services are merely intended to provide an overview of some of the problems of conventional systems, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Other problems with the state of the art and corresponding benefits of some of the various non-limiting embodiments may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.